Real, but the surviving record is thin or comes from one period only. Arrives with the Book of the Dead.
Nekau
doorkeeper of the fourth pylon
Part of the Gate Deities of the Underworld.
Overview
Nekau keeps the fourth pylon — one of ten gateways in the house of Osiris, passed after the seven Arits.
Attestation history
Book of the Dead, chapter CXLVI, in the Papyrus of Ani [budge-1895].
Lo, she who prevaileth with knives, mistress of the world, destroyer of the foes of the Still-Heart, she who decreeth the escape of the needy from evil hap. The name of the doorkeeper is Nekau.
That is the whole of the speech at this gate, and note where the weight falls: the description is of the gate, not of the god standing in it. Nekau is named in the last clause, as an afterthought.
What the texts say
The gate outranks its keeper. Every pylon in this chapter is introduced by a description of the gateway itself — and the gateway is female, addressed as a lady with attributes, powers and, at the ninth, a measurement. The doorkeeper's name arrives at the end of the sentence, unelaborated.
That is the reverse of the seven Arits, where the three officers are named first and the hall is barely described. Something changes between chapters CXLVII and CXLVI: the architecture stops being scenery and becomes the thing addressed.
What this entry cannot tell you. No cult, no epithet, no speech of his own, no appearance outside this chapter. He is a name at the end of a formula. The comparative material is on the group page.
Cult and practice
None.
The record
Every claim above traces to a row here. Source, exact place in that source, and what it actually supports.
| Source | Locus | Attests |
|---|---|---|
[budge-1895] | Book of the Dead ch. CXLVI, Papyrus of Ani | Nekau as doorkeeper of the fourth pylon |
[budge-1895] | same chapter | the gate itself described: "she who prevaileth with knives, mistress of the world, destroyer of the foes of the Still-Heart, she who decreeth the escape of the needy from evil hap" |
[budge-1895] | same chapter, vignette | the guardian as a cow-headed figure |
Sources
[budge-1895]— Budge, The Book of the Dead: The Papyrus of Ani (1895), ch. CXLVI. Public domain, archived insources-texts/. Budge caveat applies (04-BIBLIOGRAPHY.md).[naville]— Naville, Das aegyptische Todtenbuch der XVIII. bis XX. Dynastie (1886). Public domain. The Einleitung — the introduction volume, in German — is archived asnaville-1886-todtenbuch-einleitung-de.txt; the variant spellings are in the plate volumes, which are not. Checked 2026-07-30: the archived volume contains none of these names. Corrected 2026-07-30: the earlier wording declared the whole work absent, which was wrong about the book and right about the gap (C390).
Open questions
- Establish whether Nekau appears outside chapter CXLVI. A second occurrence would raise this grade.
- Are the ten pylons and the seven Arits two stages of one journey, or two versions of one idea? Budge prints them consecutively without comment; the vignettes put the Arits in the upper register and the pylons in the lower.
- Identify the gates. Each is described as a lady with attributes. Whether these are named goddesses elsewhere in the corpus is not established.
Cite this entry
Research grade: ◐partial — Genuinely attested, but the record is thin or single-period.
"Nekau", The Egyptian God Corpus,
graded partial, retrieved 2026-08-10.